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ISS Star Trails

These are some pretty awesome time lapse photos taken from the International Space Station by Flight Engineer, Don Pettit. Here’s an excerpt from the photographer:

“My star trail images are made by taking a time exposure of about 10 to 15 minutes. However, with modern digital cameras, 30 seconds is about the longest exposure possible, due to electronic detector noise effectively snowing out the image. To achieve the longer exposures I do what many amateur astronomers do. I take multiple 30-second exposures, then ‘stack’ them using imaging software, thus producing the longer exposure.”

You would think he might be able to get his hands on a long exposure camera, but oh well, these turned out great.